Nine-year-old Tala Scott is not a girly girl. In fact, if asked, she’d probably say she was a tomboy. The Princeton girl is not interested in dolls or cheerleading or fancy dresses. She loves cars and, even more so, she loves drag racing.Born into a family of drag racers, Tala has been going to drag racing events since before she could walk.“I think she went to a race before she was 1 year old. We went to a park and we paid $5 to watch them race all afternoon,” said her father, Troy Scott.Tala’s father also grew up around racing. His father and his uncle both drag raced, along with his cousins. He started racing when he was in high school and has continued to do so, on and off, since.Tala’s mom, Ginger Scott, also drag races.“It’s a family thing,” she said.It’s really more of a family obsession. An entire room in their house is dedicated to drag racing.The “hot rod” room, painted a bright yellow to match Troy and Ginger’s drag racing car — the same car Troy’s dad and uncle raced — is filled with mementos from decades of racing. Posters, photographs and plaques line the walls, trophies sit on shelves and table tops, and in one corner hangs a massive collection of Hot Wheels that Troy has collected since childhood.

Kat Russell / Kentucky New Era

So when the time came when Tala announced she wanted to race too, her parents, of course, said “OK.”“We was at a car show in Nashville and she got to go over and stand beside one — and we were already into the hot-rod racing. She was probably 4 years old then and she decided she wanted to do it,” Troy said. “She was like ‘I want to drive these, I want to do this,’ and it just never went away.”But, when they’re little, kids say they want to do a lot of things — become a fireman, fly like Superman, catch a unicorn — and it usually changes from moment to moment.“It wasn’t like that,” Ginger said. “This was, it was set in her heart and this is what she wanted to do.”“I remember going to the races and seeing them and I went to my mom and dad and told them ‘I want to do this,’” Tala said.So, Tala and Troy started training. He taught her how to drive go carts, lawnmowers, golf carts, “anything with a motor,” Ginger said.Then came the day she was ready for a junior drag racer.“We got her that car for her seventh birthday,” Troy said. He taught her how to drive it in the Stadium of Champions parking lot.That same year, Tala drove in her first race at the family’s home track— the Clarksville Speedway. At that time, Tala was the only one in her age bracket so it was a good opportunity for her to familiarize herself with the track and her car.“That first year, I think she made a couple of passes a couple different times at the track — up and down the track,” Troy said.This year, Tala is racing against other children. The racing season started in April and goes until the end of October.

Kat Russell / Kentucky New Era

“This year is the first year she’s actually competed against other cars,” Ginger said.That first race, Tala said, was daunting.“I had butterflies in my stomach,” she said, “but at that point I was already in the car, buckled up and I was getting ready to roll on to the track and that’s the point of no return.”But you get used to it, she added.“Competing against another car, it’s scary the first time but once you do it over and over again, you’re like ‘phff, I got this,’” she said.Now, she said, as she pulls her car up to the starting line she thinks about all the support she has and knows she can do it.“I just see my teachers, my mom, dad all going ‘come on Tala, you’ve done this a long time, you can win,’ and I’m like, in my head, ‘yeah I can do this, I can win,’” she said.“She’s completely focused on doing her job in the car,” Ginger added.Currently Tala is leading in points in the junior dragster class at the Clarksville Speedway and in the last couple years she has collected a menagerie of trophies, her favorite one standing almost as tall as she is.“It’s fun and I’m competitive,” Tala said. “I like to win.”“But also, she likes meeting the friends that she has met. That’s the biggest part of it,” Ginger said.The racing community is a tight-knit family, Ginger added, where — despite the competition — drivers cheer each other on and help each other when something goes wrong.“We have a blast because the people that you meet, I mean they become your family,” Ginger said. “They’ll do anything for you.”“Daddy even said he has more fun with me or Mama racing than he does with him racing,” Tala added.

As parents, Ginger and Troy said that, despite their own racing histories, letting Tala race has been unnerving.“I’m scared to death, straight up,” Troy said. “That first time she went down through there, it was crazy. (I was) shaking like a leaf — I mean literally shaking, just scared to death.”“The yellow car goes 90 miles an hour,” Ginger said of the car she and Troy race, “and I jump in it and don’t think nothing about it. She gets into a car that’s gonna go 40 miles an hour and I’m scared to death.”“In the back of your mind, you know, things could happen, but we’re getting more comfortable as parents,” Troy added.Besides, they said, it’s what Tala wants to do.“She wants to do it,” Troy said. “It’s her turn.”“You can’t hold your kids back,” Ginger said. “There’s a whole lot worse things that she could be doing. This gives her something she’s interested in.”Reach Kat Russell at 270-887-3241 or krussell@kentuckynewera.com.